The Palm Springs haircut, also commonly called the Bikini cut, is a common clip for poodles, especially those who live in warmer climates. This style involves shaving most of your poodle’s body and leaving some palm-shaped poms on the head, tail, and right above the feet. This stylish look is a popular choice for show poodles as well as pets.

Steps

Method1

Getting Ready for the Cut

1

Prepare the area. Grooming your poodle can create quite a mess, even if you are relatively careful during the process. You’ll want to bathe and groom your poodle somewhere that is easy to clean up – like the bathroom, in the garage, or outside (weather permitting).

Choose an area that works for you and get it ready with the towels, hair dryer, clippers, scissors, and anything else you may need.

2

Brush your poodle. Brush and comb your dog's coat out to where there are no mats. Washing a matted poodle is much harder to do. Use a dog brush to gently comb out your poodle’s hair and work on getting out all of the matted tangles.[1]

You should brush your poodle regularly (at least once a week) to keep its hair from getting matted between baths.

3

Bathe your poodle. Give your dog a bath in the bathtub. Be sure to use a nonslip surface in the bathtub, like a bath mat, to help your dog avoid slipping in the tub. Use shampoo made for dogs and gently lather and rinse it all throughout your poodle’s coat.[2]

Never use human shampoo on a dog. You need to buy shampoo that is specially formulated for canines.

To help your poodle’s coat remain extra soft, you may want to consider using conditioner on your poodle after shampooing. Simply lather and rinse the conditioner in the same way you use the shampoo.

4

Dry your poodle’s hair. Squeeze out some of the excess water with your hands and then use a clean towel to towel dry the rest of the excess water. You can also let your poodle shake to get rid of some of the extra moisture. After this, use a hair blow dryer on the lowest setting to dry your poodle’s hair the rest of the way.[3]

Letting your poodle air dry is another possible option, but this will lead to curly ringlets rather than smooth, fluffy hair. To get the fluffy look, you must blow dry your poodle’s hair.

Method2

Shaving Your Poodle

1

Lay out the plan for the grooming pattern. Look at some pictures of this particular cut and familiarize yourself with the pattern. Start shaving the most important areas. Begin shaving the whole body at the hind end and work your way up to the front of the dog. Shave the chest and up under the dog and the belly.[4]

Make sure to shave down the legs all the way the hocks to the joint were the foot bends and then stop shaving. You need to leave this hair to shape later.

2

Shave the poodle’s back. Use a dog clipper with a ten blade to do this haircut with. To start this haircut, take the dog clipper with the ten blade and start at the back of the neck and shave down the back to the base of the tail. Move the clippers in a slow motion against the grain of the hair.[5]

If the hair seems too thick, you can use a comb and scissors to clip the hair shorter so you can go back over it with the clippers. Simply comb out the hair and use the scissors to cut the hair above the line of the comb.

Shave a one inch ring around the tail and leave a ball of hair at the end to shape later.

3

Shave your poodle’s face. To do the face, shave down the nose, go down the muzzle to the nose, and under the jaw. Next, go back up under the eye to the corner of the eye. From there, go straight to the outer ear and shave it clean.[6]

Make sure the lips are shaved clean. There should be no little stray hairs remaining.

Be very cautious when shaving your poodle’s face. Move the clippers very slowly and be careful not to touch them to your dog’s eyes or push too hard and irritate the sensitive skin on your dog’s face.

4

Start to clip the hair on the feet. Take the paw and hold it in your hand and shave it clean, including the under pad, until you clip up to the big joint on the foot. You can use scissors to get rid of most of the hair on the bottom of the paws if you are worried about using the clippers on them. By this time there will be four legs with shaggy hair on them so far and short, shaved hair on the body.[7]

Be careful not to nick the webbing between the toes as this is very delicate skin.

Method3

Shaping the Palm-Shaped Poms

1

Work on the top knot. To shape the top knot (hair on the head), comb the hair down over the eyes and take your curve scissor and cut the hair till you see the eyes then from the corner of the eye to outer ear cut the hanging hair off and blend it into the top of the ear and shape the hair to round it off and blend it in to the back of the neck.[8]

Use the rounded scissors to shape the top palm into the desired height, length, and overall look.

2

Shape the foot palms. To shape the palms, this should be the last part to be done. You should have four legs with hair at the top of the foot to the big joint were the dog would bend its foot and shave the hair off the foot to where the foot is clean.[9]

To start the palms, you want to comb the hair down and make your first cut to where you shaved the top of the foot to the line where you stopped. Use your curved scissors and scissor the palm to the back so the hair doesn't lay on the ground. Do the same on the top of the palm and do the same thing to the other three palms.

Now you should four round balls of hair just above your dog’s paws on a standard poodle the palms should be the size of a grapefruit the palm would be smaller depending on the dog.

3

Finish grooming the tail. For the Palm Springs cut, the poodle’s tail should have pom on it. You can determine how fluffy you want the pom to be, but you need one. Use the clippers to shave up from the base of the tail where you already shaved. The pom should get bigger at the tip of the tail and be shaved closer toward the base.

Be sure to use the clippers to taper the hair so that the pom can get slightly larger at the end of the tail.

Method4

Managing Any Challenges

1

Avoid nicking sensitive areas. Just like humans, dogs have certain areas that are more delicate and sensitive than others. When grooming your poodle, be extra careful around these specific areas to avoid hurting the dog and making it bleed.[10]

These sensitive spots include the eyes, nipples, lips, and ears.

2

Keep an eye on the clipper blade. Clipper blades can heat up fairly quickly while being used. If you aren’t careful, it’s possible that you could burn your poodle’s skin with the metal blades. While using the clippers, pause every couple of minutes to turn the clippers off so you can safely check the temperature of the blades. If it feels hot to the touch, you should wait a few minutes until the blades cool down before continuing.[11]

Don’t try to feel the blades while the clippers are in use as this could cause you to cut yourself.

3

Monitor your dog’s demeanor. You don’t want your dog to be scared or nervous during the grooming process, so make sure you talk to the dog and pet it to keep the dog calm while you’re grooming it. Try to watch for signs of nervousness like whimpering, jerking away, darting eyes, and crouching down. If your dog does any of these things, take a moment to comfort it and reassure the dog nothing bad will happen.[12]

If your dog is squirming too much, you may want help it expel some energy before you begin grooming. Take your dog for a walk or run around with it in the backyard.

To make sure your dog is as comfortable as possible during the grooming experience, be sure to let it outside to go to the bathroom before you start. Grooming can take a while and you don’t want your dog to be uncomfortable because it needs to go outside.

4

Allow for errors. If you make a mistake while grooming, try to even it out on the other side. For example, if you cut the hair shorter than you intended to on one pom, try to even it out on the other side if there is a corresponding one. If you make a mistake in a more noticeable place, like the top knot, just go with the flow and let your dog’s top knot be a bit smaller this time. It will grow back out soon and you’ll be able to fix it.

If you can’t even it out, then just get it as close as possible and give the hair some time to grow back out. No matter how big the mistake may seem to you, don’t stress about it because it’ll just be a week or two before the hair will be long enough again to fix the problem.